OMG in the News

"You may recall that the OMG (Original Mac Games) Cup is a competition to "encourage unique Mac game development." Entrants were given only six weeks to create fun games for the Mac. Well, the deadline for entries is now over and public judging has begun.

And what that means is 36 free Mac games for you to play.

Honestly, most of the games don't look or sound all that great. Except for Pakimono, which has you running naked in front of Japanese tourists' cameras as they try to take photos in Copenhagen."

There seems to be a disconnect between what people are looking for (graphics, sound) and the voting criteria (gameplay.) It's perfectly legit for the quality of the graphics, sound, and polish to affect how gameplay is perceived by the player. I expect that to some extent, but I wonder to what extent the general public are judging gameplay at all?

Ah well, good to see publicity for the contest. Even mixed reviews will get us more players if the words "free" and "games" are mentioned.

MattDiamond Wrote:Yes. Or, to go the other way, since polish and razmatazz are important to most game players, maybe we are spitting in the wind if we try to run a contest where those aren't a primary judging criteria.

Being forced to pander to the shallow masses would be such a shame.

The contest is about coming up with Original Mac Games and it is the game play that makes the games original.

Andrew Sage Wrote:Being forced to pander to the shallow masses would be such a shame.

Thats what was best about this contest I think it was taken from another viewpoint than most, and a more important one, if I cant say that. How ever good graphics/polish a game has doesn't make you play it for days and days (with the exception of Dead or Alive beach volleyball ).
Im pretty sure most people will understand the meaning of gameplay, but for sure some people will just vote 10 for the game they thought was coolest, which is why im glad its a two stage voting proccess.

I thought it worked quite well for this competition -- to do well in the public vote you'll have to have good graphics and sound and acceptable gameplay, and to do well in the judges' vote you'll have to have good gameplay, which leads to a balanced overall vote...

It's just a pity that the contest page is naÃ¯ve enough to suggest that only gameplay matters

I would have wrote some thing like "from 1 to 10 how much did you enjoy the game?" In the end that's what really matters. Though gameplay is a closely related concept, also graphics and music can make you enjoy a game, depending on what the gamer looks for.

I've fixed the spelling of "Public" (thanks Teresa!) and while inside the voting system, I altered the text to read:

"The OMG (Original Mac Games) Cup is a new game programming contest established by iDevGames, in connection with Freeverse Software, to encourage unique Mac game development. The challenge of the contest is to create innovative Mac OS X games that emphasize engaging gameplayâ€•in only six weeks! You may rate games between December 1, 2005 12:01am GMT and December 15, 2005 11:59pm GMT. Before rating any game be sure to download and play the game. Your honest vote is appreciated."

I little better IMHO.

I would also have changed the text above the pop-up but I need to get back to work. (The way the system works, I actually need to change VERY extrants text, rather than just once... a bit of a pain..)